Every MUSH has its own culture of how people find roleplay. This explains ours, and goes through the tools that are available to help you find play.

The Culture of the Game

We are a game of relatively purposeful players; people here tend to prefer scenes with a purpose, rather than random social RP. While there is random social play available, it tends to be secondary to the pursuit of plot or more focused character development.

We strongly encourage players here to have IC agendas that their characters are pursuing, as this helps to drive motivation for interaction and move plots along. Our most active players tend to go looking for scenes that further their IC agendas. However, not everyone is going to be proactive in this way. We've got a lot of players who don't necessarily have strong agendas of their own, but enjoy working to help more goal-driven players achieve those goals.

This guide is divided into different aspects of finding play:

Finding random social RP.

Finding someone specific.

Getting yourself attached to somebody else's goals.

Finding others to attach to your own goals.

Advertising Yourself

Make sure you go through a proper character setup. Four things are really important:

Write your +pbgpublic background to tell other people what they can easily discover about you IC.

Write your +hooks to let people know what your roleplay hooks are, so that they can think of reasons to seek you out IC.

Set your roleplay preferences (see +help Prefs for instructions), to let other people know what kind of play you're interested in. This will help people see if you're a good fit for their personal styles, and vice versa.

Set your Trouble rating (see +help Trouble for instructions), to let other people know how open you are to IC conflict.

You are also strongly encouraged to post to the Intros bulletin board (see +help BB Posting for instructions). This is, pure and simple, an OOC announcement to other players, letting them know who your character is, how'd you like to get involved, and how other people can involve you in play. It is basically an advertisement for yourself.

Players are very open to meeting new people and including more people in their play. However, they often need IC excuses to do so, or at least the OOC awareness that there's someone there to meet. The more information you supply in +pbg, +hooks, and your bboard posting, the easier it is for other people to pull you into play. (Be careful about overwhelming with information, though: You want to make it easy for people to pull out important details, so be succinct.)

If you want to keep others up to speed, OOC, on what you're doing, we've got an active LiveJournal community that's useful for such things; see our LJ setup instructions for details.

Finding Random Social Play

If you simply want to RP, and you don't particularly care what the scene about, you have a number of options available to you.

The first is to simply plant yourself in public and hope for other people to show up. To do this, try the following:

Go to one of the primary social gathering spots in the city (+go city, then type +zoom to get a list of these places, then +zoom shortcut to get there).

Type +seek on. This will flag you as someone who is looking for a random scene, and your name will be backgrounded in blue, in a variety of commands, letting everyone else see you're looking.

Ask on the Public channel if anyone would like a scene.

The second is to actively look for a current scene to join. To do this, try one or more of the following:

Type +seek. This will show a list of people who are currently seeking random RP. Join them if they're in public, or page them and ask for a scene if they're not.

Type +public. This will show, among other things, a list of people in public rooms. Scenes in public are implicitly open to everyone with an excuse to show up, and other people are welcome to join them. People idling in public are also usually implicitly looking for a scene. Scenes in the city hangouts (the +zoom shortcuts) are always completely open to the public, and you do not need to ask permission to show up and interrupt. If you're not sure if people in public are "really" public, just page them and ask them.

Your third option is to simply page someone who doesn't look like they're in a scene, and ask them if they'd like to RP. Most people, unless swamped with work or family or otherwise mostly AFK, will say yes, as long as you can agree on some excuse to run into each other IC.

You can type +locate to find the currently-connected players who have an RPG ability called Dramatic Timing. People with Dramatic Timing are supposed to be trivially easy to locate, and to blunder into things going on, so if they have any desire whatsoever to roleplay, it should be trivial to come up with an excuse to run into one another.

Finding Someone Specific

Everyone likes to be wanted.

Want lists (see +help Want for instructions) are a great way to let other people know that you're looking for them, since they provide alerts to them when they log on as any of their alts, and give them an easy way to keep track of who's looking for a scene. If you want a scene with someone, always put them on your want list. It means they'll always have a reminder — and so will you.

Many players have multiple characters. If you're looking for someone and you don't see them on, you can try using the +altping command (see +help Altping for instructions). If they've got any alts on, they will be alerted that you're looking for them. +altping also lets you trade messages back and forth, without either of you having to reveal your alts.

Attaching Yourself to Other People

If you're not the kind of player who tends to have big goals of their own, but you want to get involved in purpose-driven play, learn to be a good minion.

In other words, find someone who is active, who needs help with their goals, and get in good with them. Get them to trust you, and run errands for them. The simplest approach is to ask them to establish some background with you; characters are long-lived and have often spent time away from Amber in the past, so there's no need for you to be a stranger, even if your character has been away for years or even decades. Alternatively, you can establish a new relationship from scratch.

How can you tell who might be up to interesting things?

Check the Plot bulletin board (+bbread Plot). This is where people post messages for player-run plots.

Check +gossip. This is where IC announcements of goings-on are posted, including any IC recruitment going on.

Be bold about paging people, sending people +mail to indicate your interest, and using +want. Don't be shy. You are not bothering people when you ask for RP or indicate an interest in other people's doings. Other people want play, too, and even if they're not currently free, they're almost always willing to play later.

Getting Other People Involved in What You're Doing

Do you have a plot or set of goals that you'd like other people to get involved in? Try the following:

Post to the Plot bulletin board. Try to disclose as much information as possible, so people get interested and want to get involved.

Post +gossip. Use trivial gossip, so that your name is public and it doesn't cost you any Focus; that makes it easy to contact you. It's a great way to advertise for the need for particular IC skills.

Post logs of significant scenes to your character LiveJournal.

Public backgrounds and hooks are searchable. They're the best way to find people, if you're looking for someone with a particular connection but aren't sure who it would be. Because people are very open to being paged and asked to participate in something, this is a great way to form connections.